Improved clothes-line holder



UNrrs STATES Peri-NT Fries.,

ABEL L. HURTT, OF MONTIGELL, INDIANA.

HVlPROVED CLOTHES-LINE HOLDER.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 103,518, dated May 3,1870,

T0 @ZZ whom, t may concern.-

Be it known that I, ABEL L. HURTT, of Monticello, Vhite county, Indiana,have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Clothes-LineHolders; and I do hereby declarethat the following is a full, clear, andexact description of my invention, reference being had to theaccompanying drawings, forming apart this specification, and to theletters of reference marked thereon, of which drawings- Figures l, 2,and 3 are views showing the application of my holder. Fi gsxi areperspective and side views of the upper ,cam of holder. Figs. 5 are rearand side views of the lower cam of holder.

My invention relates to certain improvements in the construction ofholders for attaching clothes-lines to posts or buildings for hangingout clothes to dry, or for securing any rope or strap to any fixedpoint, and it consists in the combination of two cams, one of which isprovided with an edge an'ge, which cams are secured to the desiredpointby pivotscrews or their equivalents, and act together to hold the lineor rope between them at any desired point, whereby I obtain a very cheapand simple device which is easily applied and operated, and which willhold any desired size of rope or strap in a perfectly secure manner.

The advantages resulting from the use of the two cams in combinationwith each other consist in the obtaining of a perfectly secure holderfor any size of rope, within reasonable limits, without the necessity ofaltering the position of the pivots of either cam, and also in theobtaining of a gripping mechanism which acts on the principle Qf thetoggle-j oint, and hence gives a much more powerful grip on the ropethan could be obtained by any singlefcam device, which can only act as asingle-pivoted lever in producing the gripe on the rope.

To enable others skilled in the art to make and use my invention, I willproceed to describe its construction and operation.

The upper cam, A, is a simple wheel of castiron, provided with thescrew-hole, and having a corrugated face, K, and is made with a slightdraft, as shown in side view, for convenience in casting. The lower cam,B, consists of the body L, provided with the corrugated face N, and-having the screw-hole 71y formed in it, and the flange M,which is caston the body L, and which serves to prevent the rope from pullingsidewise out of the holder.l These cams A and B are secured to the postH or other desired object by the pivot-screws D and C, or theirequivalents, which pass through the screw-holes g and hin said cams, asshown in Figs. l to 3.

The positions of thecams A B on their pivots in holding a rope will varywith the size of the rope to be held-as, for example, in holding alarge-sized rope, E, as shown in Fig. l, both the short ends X Y of thecam-axes X X Y Y diverge toward the rope E on the side of the directionof the strain on the rope, (indicated) by arrow-head; and in holdingasmaller rope, F, .as shown in Fig. 2, the short end X of the axis XX isdirected toward the strained side of the rope, and the short end Y ofthe axis Y Y is directed away from it, while in holding-a still smallerrope, G, as shown in Fig. 3, both the axesXX and YY are nearly parallelto each other and to the rope, the object being in each case to obtainsuch a distance between the bearing-surfaces of the cams as to securethe bite7 of the cams on the desired size of the rope.

From an inspection of Fig. l it is evident that the action of the camsis that of a togglejoint, the line a b representing one armof the toggleand the'line d f the other arm; and it is also evident that in case thefirst toggle, f d b a, does not prove sufficiently powerful to hold therope, the second toggle, f e c a, will then come into play, and so on,so that if the cams A B be secured on the post H in such a way thattheir surfaces L and K could be brought into contact, it is evident thatthey would grip any size of rope or line from the small metalclothes-line to as large a rope as could be put between them, and thatthere is no possibility of the rope slipping between them.

It is also readily seen that this adaptation of the holder to differentsizes of ropes cannot be had by the use of a single cam, A, incombination with a iixed plate or pulley, for the action of the camAwould then dependwholly upon the pressure of the arm a, b and thefriction existing between the rope E and the face K of the cam A; and ifthe rope were very large, the friction between the cam-face and ropewould not be sufficient to bring the lever ab into play. Consequently,if the cani A were arranged in combination with a fixed plate or pulley,so as to hold a large rope, it would not hold a small one, and ViceVersa, so that its applioation is very limited.

I ain aware that single cams A have been before used, both incombination With a stationary pin or plate and with a pulley; hence Ilay no claim to such cani, except when used in combination with a secondcani, B; nor do I claim the flange M on the @am B, as this feature hasbeen before shown; but

That I do claim herein as new and of' my in Vent-ion, and desire tosecure by Letters Patent, 1s-

`hand this 21st day of February, A. D. 1870.

ABEL L. HURTT.

Vitnesses:

Jon ABBOTT, ANDREW CHOFFIN.

